Chapter 30
NOTHING IS RIGHT
Rhys
I feel so naked with Margot gone that I keep checking to make sure I’m wearing clothes. Can’t sit still. Can’t sleep. Can’t eat.
Decker’s not returning my texts, including the one where I told him I’m not leaving his cabin until he talks to me face-to-face and hears my side of this story.
And my heart—I don’t even know if it exists anymore.
I know I want it to.
I know I don’t want to live through another year of hell like this past one.
But I don’t know what the actual fuck to do to keep my life from feeling like it’s spinning out of control and my heart from giving up and going back into hiding.
So early Saturday morning, as soon as the sun’s up, I’m out back behind the cabin, tackling the last of the logs that need to be split.
Not for Decker.
But because I need to picture the faces of all of the people who’ve pissed me off.
For once, Xavier’s or Colt’s or Felice’s isn’t the first face I see.
The first face I see is a man I’ve only seen once in my life.
Margot’s father.
The triplets’ biological sperm donor.
The man who’s upended too many fucking lives to count.
That’s who I see when I’m swinging the maul with everything inside me, to the point that I split the chopping block too.
I growl with frustration and turn to throw the maul, and that’s when I spot Decker.
No, not Decker.
That’s Lucky leaning against the side of the cabin, wearing clothes just similar enough to Decker’s usual outfit that he threw me off, watching me.
“Knocked,” he says. “No one answered.”
He doesn’t look mad.
Just tired.
“She’s gone,” I grunt.
He swallows and looks down. “Yeah. Got that text.”
I want to demand to know what it said. Exactly what it said. Every letter. The spacing. The punctuation.
Instead, I eye him. “Your dad okay?”
He sighs. “Okay as he can be.”
I don’t ask for more details.
Not my fucking business.
“They almost split up,” he says. “Before we were born. They’d been trying to get pregnant for a few years, nothing was working, fertility treatments and all of it—just so much stress.
So they decided they were going to split.
Just couldn’t—couldn’t keep doing it. Mom had a fling with some guy who charmed her in a hotel bar while she was staying there, deciding what she wanted to do next, and a few weeks later, bam.
Positive pregnancy test. She didn’t know if we were Dad’s or the other guy’s—more details than I wanted there—but when she started thinking about raising us alone, even before she knew there were three of us, and then thought about all the work they’d put into getting pregnant and depriving Dad of that—”
He cuts himself off and shakes his head.
“She loves you,” I say.
“Yeah. She does. Loves him too. Can’t not. He’s—he’s the best.”
“Fucking lucky you have both of them.”
“I know.”
He toes the ground, hands in his pockets, still looking down.
I curl my fingers into fists.
Not because I want to hit him, but because I want to hit something.
Anything to keep the raging fury in my wounded soul from consuming me and destroying my battered heart forever.
This is why I didn’t want revenge on Xavier.
Because anger and rage and vengeance—I knew they’d consume me.
And now I’m feeling torn in every direction because of what I want for myself and what I want for my friends and what I want for Margot, and I can’t—fuck on a rice cake, why can’t I just feel less? About anything?
“Tobias Merriweather-Brown is a fucking bastard,” I say. “She wanted—she wanted your help taking him down. But not if it would make you collateral damage.”
“Taking him down how?”
“Forcing him into retirement. Exposing him as a cheater.”
He shakes his head.
“To avenge her sister,” I add. “You have another sister. Daphne. Margot—Margot talks about her like she’s a unicorn princess made of fairy dust and mischief and heart.”
Lucky eyes me. “The sister who stole Mar—Margot’s fiancé?”
Figured they would’ve looked her up and found the articles.
I want to read them over again from the start, just to feel close to her again.
“Didn’t steal,” I say. “Margot and Oliver broke up years ago. They’re tight. The news articles—it was a cover story so no one would suspect she was here. Getting to know you.”
Talking about Margot—defending Margot—it makes me feel like I’m eating ash.
But it’s also making my heart beat again.
Softly.
Tentatively.
But still beating.
“Why didn’t she tell us who she was?” I know that pain in Lucky’s voice. The sound of betrayal. The sound of heartbreak. “We—fuck, she has to know we wouldn’t have cared how rich she was. Look who our friends are.”
“You know what her parents did to her sister?”
Lucky nods.
“You try growing up with that and tell me—”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Just thinking about it has my throat getting choked up and my sinuses getting hot and that rage billowing all over again.
Lucky lifts his brows. “Tell you what?”
“Tell me you wouldn’t be insecure as shit and terrified to let someone actually love you for who you really are,” I finish thickly.
Goddammit.
That’s why she left.
She meant every fucking word.
It wasn’t an excuse. Not a story because she’s not who she showed me she was the past two weeks.
It’s because that woman—my woman—the woman who seemingly has everything, has never fully had the things that matters most.
Unconditional love.
Unconditional forgiveness.
Unconditional support.
Lucky’s watching me. “You okay?”
I press my fists into my eyes. “I’m going to New York.
To help her. To be by her side for whatever the fuck she needs.
And if you and your brothers aren’t coming with me to have her back, fuck you all.
She’s a good—no, she’s the best person. She has all of the fucking money in the world.
She has every resource, every advantage, every avenue open to her, every way she could’ve swooped in here and made your lives hell if you didn’t cooperate with whatever her plan was to take her father down, and the one thing she kept talking about was being a better person and not asking you for anything if it would hurt you.
If you—if you’re not willing to give her another chance, then you don’t fucking deserve her. ”
If I don’t give her another chance—if I don’t fight for her, if I don’t show her that I don’t want perfect, that I want her—then I don’t deserve her.
Sweat’s not just beading at my hairline. It’s streaking down my face.
My heart’s beating in absolute terror.
What if—what if I fly across the country, track her down, tell her I love her, tell her all of this—that I want to be by her side while she keeps growing and healing and finding her whole self, that I want to love her and laugh with her and cook with her and watch TV with her and make a life with her, flaws and insecurities and fears and all—and she still doesn’t want me?
What then?
But what if she does want me?
What if she does want me, and I’m too fucking scared to be her hero?
“You love her,” Lucky says.
“She brought me back to life.”
“How long—how long did you know who she was?”
“Almost from day one.”
“And she knew you knew?”
“From day five.”
He stares out into the woods surrounding the cabin. “You watched her when you knew who she was and she didn’t know you knew?”
“Wanted to—wanted to figure out if I could trust her. Like Decker asked me to. And she—she’s a good person, Lucky.
The best person. You can’t—you can’t fake what she did.
Who she is. She’s like your friends—doesn’t think she’s any better than anyone else.
She’ll get down on the floor and help clean up a spilled tray of coffee because it fucking matters.
And she didn’t have the advantage of growing up here, with people who loved her the way your parents and family and friends love you, teaching her that helping others, that being part of a community, matters. She had to teach herself.”
Lucky suddenly gasps as he looks behind me.
“What?” I spin and spot it.
The moose.
Margot’s moose.
“Holy shit,” Lucky whispers. “I’ve never seen one before.”
“It likes your sister.”
Thing’s too close.
Way too close.
It eyes me, then Lucky.
And then it snorts and turns around and walks back into the woods.
“Okay,” Lucky says. “Okay. I’ll talk to my brothers. I—yeah. Wow. Give me an hour, okay? Maybe two.” His brow furrows. “Maybe she did get hit with the curse too.”
“The fuck?”
He shrugs at me. “She fell in love, and our family—”
She fell in love.
He thinks she loves me back.
I fumble for my phone, get it out of my pocket, and drop it on the wood pile.
When I lift it—are you fucking kidding me?
I gape at Lucky. “It fucking broke.”
He stares at me a beat, and then the bastard starts laughing.
I growl.
He laughs harder, holding up a hand. “Just let me have this,” he wheezes. “Let me have this. And then—yeah. Then we’re gonna go make a bunch of shit right.”